Blog under hibernation!

Life logger #1

There are a lot of things, both good and bad, that have happened since I logged out from wordpress last time, just that I haven’t penned them down. Good things first. Did I tell you that I got a bike? Yeah, a black honda unicorn. And did I tell you that I managed to ride 1700 kms in 75 days without any accidents or curses from co-riders? Riding it on the highway brings so much pleasure that I completely enjoy riding on the stretch from Chrompet to Guindy which takes about 20 minutes. After that, riding through Saidapet and Nandanam becomes a pain with lot of signals, slow movement of traffic, and people crossing the road whenever they like, showing palms as if they belong to Congress. Anyway I reach my office in 50 minutes by bike (compare it to 110 minutes byMTC).  So, after 4 years, my MCWG/LMV license found a purpose to serve other than being identity proof for SIM cards I learned to ride only after getting the bike but people haven’t stopped teasing me commenting about my speed. But I would never compromise on safety and fuel efficiency(mileage) for speed, especially after witnessing so many bad drivers out there !
One more surprise was that my good friend and college mate rave has shifted his house to Tambaram Sanatorium reachable in just 10 minutes from my house(of course, in bike) Went to his house last week end and met him. Expecting to meet him more often !
Time to list the bad things -  Fire Accident The place was just 4 houses away from my house. The baby’s mother also died few days back, after spending nearly 2 weeks in hospital. This bizarre fire accident had a deep impact leaving me sleepless for days.
My mother’s health is still on the decline. Right from my childhood and  society even up to my college days, she used to be hyper active doing ten different things at a time. It is very sad to see such a person now becoming very passive, fighting against heart problems and low BP, chronic neck pain adding to the list. As she feels a support in me, I once again realized the importance and significance of that one decision which I took in haste – leaving Bangalore and hence Veveo (they were paying me a hefty salary) to come back to Chennai. It  happened to be one of the very few right decisions I’ve taken in my life.
Amidst all these, the urge to bring some changes in the society never left me. Recently, I joined BHUMI as an experiment. There are a number of reasons for why I wanted to try BHUMI when there are hundreds of NGOs. May need a separate post for that. But right now, no comments about it. I’ve to wait and see how different is it from NGOs, to what extent the words are translated to action and how significant is the change it brings about.

More things are there to write, especially about things I’m doing at HeyMath!  So in all probability, I won’t take much time to be back here

Never give up!

Don't ever think of giving up!

An interesting picture I came across today!

Slum Dog Millionaire is not a great film

I resisted myself  from writing about this but unfortunately I couldn’t. Those who are excited about this film winning the oscars might know it themselves. Let me make one thing clear. I’m not a hater of this movie! I also liked the movie when I watched it.  It had a different  contemporary story line and of course, was a well taken movie. But there was literally nothing in the movie that deserved so much. What reality does the movie convey? Does Boyle think slums are only in India and not in UK? Are there no good things happening for the people in slums? Are communal tensions only in Indian slums? Does he think his country is free of racism? Then why the hell he chose India? Ok, let’s assume everything against India for the above. So, at least, was it a serious movie depicting these problems in India? No way! The reality or the seriousness just ends with the performance of street children in the movie and many indian movies have already done it better. The movie turned almost comic there after – right from mafia boss eating sandwich to the song-dance masala at the end. How is the movie really different from an average bollywood movie where love wins amidst problems? you’ve to be honest to understand it’s definitely not worth the hype that has been created. One simple reason the film has got so much recognition from the west  is the fact that west just loves to see India as one big slum and whoever shows it like that will be awarded and rewarded. Rahman receives awards for this kind of a film when he has composed extra ordinary music for various films and albums. And he dedicates them for India   Absolute disappointment is not the West seeing India as a slum, but we indians looking at it the same way! Let us just kill the habit of over hyping  every thing that comes from the west!

Tomato Soup Recipe

Two days ago, Ramki visited HeyMath! along with the teams which won first three places in Math Modeling contest of Kurukshetra 2009 . The only thing I knew about him was the fact that he cooked all alone for 500 people in just 3 hours (starting with cutting vegetables )  During his short informal talk, he spoke about how cookbooks cut short our creativity in cooking, by creating an illusion  – there is only one way to cook a recipe. According to him, the only requirement to cook a recipe is knowing the properties of basic ingredients(which he calls building blocks) to be used. Never use ingredients about which you do not know. By altering the amount of various ingredients or replacing one with another, one can cook the same recipe in different flavors. I wanted to try something on my own today, a simple one to start with like  Tomato soup ( the word ‘tomcat’ was resting at some spot of my cerebrum which  made me end up in ‘tomato’ soup)   Main ingredients – 4 or 5 medium sized bangalore tomatoes, 2 or 3 medium sized onions, 1 small capsicum, 3 to 4 garlic cloves, a tumbler of milk. Salt, maida flour, butter, olive oil, coriander leaves are needed in small quantities. Cook the tomatoes and peeled off onions for about 10 minutes in a pressure cooker. After cooling, peel off the tomatoes. In the mean time, apply olive oil on the surface of capsicum and keep it in direct fire such that its skin [alone] gets burnt uniformly. After sometime, peel off the capsicum. Now take the onions, tomatoes, capsicum, garlic cloves and mash them up in a mixer to a paste. Heat a pan and add a tea spoon of butter. When it melts, add a spoon of maida flour and stir. Add the tumbler of milk followed by the paste we have. Cook uncovered for about 3 to 4 minutes in medium heat.  In the end, add a pinch of salt, few pinches of pepper and coriander leaves. You may want to strain the soup to remove skin or seeds, if any. The quantity would be more than sufficient for 4 serves. It tasted good, really!  The only negative comment i received from my sis was about the color(it wasn’t really red or not even orange). Still, i can call it tomato soup Suggestions/improvements are welcome! Thanks to Ramki for rekindling my interest in cooking and to my mom for the basic ideas (and for certifying my recipe as well:)) As my interest in cooking is growing at some rate, i’ll come up with more recipes in future!